Sky Breaker (Night Spinner Duology), Addie Thorley [100 books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

but I refuse to give Enebish and Temujin that satisfaction. Plus I have an advantage the others do not: I’m accustomed to Enebish’s darkness. As accustomed as a person can be without the ability to spin the night, that is.

Stretching out my arms, I feel my way across the glass-strewn atrium and back down the corridor, breaking into a run once my hand is flush against the wall.

When Enebish’s power first presented, she stayed up all night fiddling with the ink-black threads, as she called them, drenching our entire room in impenetrable shadow. She never would have stopped practicing—she never would have even known the sun had risen—if I hadn’t woken up screaming most mornings.

In time, I grew less terrified of the oppressive blackness. But I will never forget how my heart raced that first morning. How I felt like I was choking, suffocating. Falling down, down, down a never-ending well.

Just as my honorless, double-crossing warriors are now.

They continue to fight and thrash, desperate to escape the vault.

When we first chose the space for our war room, the close walls and jutting shelves seemed like a good thing. An extra layer of protection. But in the dark, the obstacles might as well be prison bars. Not even the Sun Stokers can counteract Enebish’s darkness. They snap their fingers, but every spark is doused in an instant, leaving the most elite warriors in Ashkar to grapple helplessly for the door.

I feel my way to the threshold and lean against the frame, listening to their weakness. Picturing their desperation. I ran back to them on instinct—to rally them to defend our king and city—but now I’m tempted to leave them here. It would be so easy to slip down the hall and out the door. Let them try to escape and orchestrate a counterattack without me.

This is what happens when you “dismiss” your commander, I’d crow as I watched Enebish and Temujin overtake them.

Or even better, I could seal the door with ice and fill the air with frost. Trap them in here until they’re too cold to move, too frozen to escape. A gift for the Shoniin.

I reach for the door, my lips carved into a grin, when my mother’s warbling voice and my father’s stricken face appear through the blackness. They’re seated in the music room at our estate, as always, but instead of rushing to greet me, eager to hear of my victories, Mamá is sobbing over her embroidery and Papá is pacing the room, downing glass after glass of vorkhi.

“How did you, alone, escape?” he asks.

“Was there nothing you could have done to save them?” Mamá cries.

“We’re so grateful you survived, but …”

But, but, but!

I could never face my family or the people of Ashkar without my warriors. No one will revere a commander who left her battalion to die—even if they deserved it—because the people will never know they conspired against me. No one will allow me to speak ill of the dead. Especially not if the Sky King is among them. In the eyes of Ashkar, I would be the traitor. The coward.

No better than Temujin.

I want to shout and rage at the injustice, but I let out a long breath, tighten my ponytail, and smooth my hands down my leathers. I will never forget their betrayal, and I will never forgive them, but if I must save my warriors to salvage my reputation and reclaim my position, so be it.

“Stop moving!” I shout.

They continue jostling and yelling, punching and scraping. Crawling over one another like feral dogs as pops of light from the Sun Stokers flare in and out.

“Listen to me if you want to get out of here!”

Again they ignore me. Or maybe they can’t hear me. Thankfully, I have ways to make them listen.

Placing my palms on either side of the door frame, I press my cold outward, sliding it across the floors and along the walls like the giant blocks of ice we cut from the Amereti each winter. That’s how my Kalima power has always felt: like a crushing weight I must unload. Almost too heavy to move.

I can’t see the blue and white fractals overtaking the walls, but I feel the power shoot through my fingertips. My body shivers with delight as the temperature plummets. Colder and colder until breath clouds my face and tickles my cheeks.

“The commander is attacking us!” my warriors shout.

“She’s defected to the enemy!”

Of course that’s what they’d think.

The loudest voice sounds like Bastian, and I make a mental note to annihilate him at our next training session.

Assuming there is a next training session.

“Unlike you, I haven’t betrayed anyone,” I retort. “I’m trying to help. But if you’d rather perish at the hands of Enebish and Temujin, by all means, keep fighting me.”

To my astonishment, the jostling ceases. Probably out of habit or sheer desperation, but I’ll take it. “Reach out in front of you. If you can feel the table or chairs or anything at all, shove them together in the middle of the room. Then step back as far as you can. Press yourselves against the walls.”

I give them exactly one minute to complete this task before I center myself in the doorway, raise my hands, and send a blast of ice hurtling at the furniture. It streaks through the blackness like a long, white spear, visible for a fleeting instant, before it hits the pile with a crack. It sounds like the entire room is shattering, and my warriors gasp. The Sky King cries out. Though, it’s completely unnecessary. My aim was true. I can feel my ice seeping into the wood, binding each piece together and freezing it to the vault floor.

“Eshwar, lightning!” I command. After a brief hesitation, Eshwar hurls a snapping bolt of electricity at my makeshift firepit. As soon as the furniture bursts to flame, I shout at the Sun Stokers, “Fuel the blaze!”

All five Sun Stokers dart forward, palms up, and direct their strength into the fire. The